


Invasive Measures

by Tonko



Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, Mild Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-21
Updated: 2011-07-21
Packaged: 2017-10-21 15:14:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/226609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tonko/pseuds/Tonko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zoro is very strong. Anaesthetics don't work very well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Invasive Measures

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the hc_bingo challenge on Livejournal, for the prompt "Surgery". Beta'd by my dear [printfogey](http://archiveofourown.org/users/printfogey/profile), and any remaining errors are mine.

_This isn't working,_ Chopper thought as he spread the incision to the minimum he needed and prepared to slide his fingers into the bloody heat of Zoro's abdomen. He wished, not for the first time, that his Heavy Point was just a little more delicately built.

In this swampy jungle on a summer island it was disgustingly humid, every surface and the air itself rife with mold, parasites, and bacteria. Damp clothing that couldn't dry only made it worse. Wound infection from mere scratches was near inevitable.

And Chopper was cutting into one of his nakama on purpose.

Zoro was laid out on bare dirt, the rotting leaf litter swept away in a hurry by a multitude of Robin’s hands, the same ones that were now supporting the tarp that shielded Chopper and his patient from the constant dripping of water off the trees.

Franky could have made a shelter, but he was occupied pinning Zoro's ankles to the ground.

Luffy, leaning down against Zoro's shoulders, was already having to fight against Zoro's unconscious resistance to drugging. His expression was fixed in nearly blank concentration, made disquieting by the fear-pallor of his face and the tears that swam across his eyes and dripped freely down.

"You stupid fucker, stupid stupid marimo asshole," Sanji was muttering, ragged and furious from where he was doing his best to hold Zoro's wrists to the ground while he had a leg braced to pin his hips. He’d spat his cigarette away and was speaking through gritted teeth. "Stupid, why did you eat that shit, why did you eat _anything_ I didn't cook for you." The cook's ongoing litany of curses and insults was a background blur of noise to Chopper by now.

Chopper ignored it all. There was a place in his mind that he locked his nerves into for this kind of work, all the panic and horror that would otherwise be running immediately under his skin, making his hands shake and his breathing speed up in the face of the thing he was doing.

That place still held, for now, kept him stable.

Not so with the anaesthetic he’d administered to Zoro.

Zoro’s eyebrows twitched. His stomach muscles tensed, increasing blood flow into the incision. No, no, no.

"Give him more," Chopper ordered,

The anaesthetic-soaked folded cloth, the fourth now that Chopper had had Nami press over Zoro's nose and mouth, was turning out to be a pathetic effort to keep him unconscious, but it was all Chopper had on hand. That mixture was incredibly unsafe for any average human, but on the Grand Line, the potency was required. And still, for Zoro, it was barely enough, or maybe even not enough at all, because his body was fighting for every scrap of awareness.

Behind Nami, Brook was handling the compressed-fluid bottle that Chopper used to store the anaesthetic in his pack, keeping the stack of cloths saturated. That bottle held enough to knock out a village in any of the Blues for hours, but Chopper had to work fast, and he watched Zoro intently, waiting for the soonest moment it would be safe for him to continue.

Usopp, holding the lantern that was casting the required light over Zoro and the incision Chopper had made, was trembling slightly. The fear rolling off him was the sharpest of what Chopper could smell coming off of all of them. Even Brook’s dusty scent and Franky’s metal-and-oil tang carried it.

The lantern, though, held steady. Usopp's hands were nothing if not accurate.

At last, Zoro's body relaxed, the anaesthetic overpowering him once again, and Chopper pushed on.

He spread the incision, accepting scraps of cloth from Robin's hands to daub blood away. They weren't disinfected—they were Sanji's spare shirt. But infection was not, despite everything, the urgent danger here.

That worm, that filthy nematode parasite. So fast, so powerful, like too many things out here. Its growth stage was horrific, eating through the digestive tract where it hatched in under a minute, growing and heading outwards to richer grounds. The bloody trail it had left through Zoro's abdomen couldn't even be tended yet, because the thing was chewing its way upwards towards the richest muscle mass. Upward, into the chest cavity and ultimately the heart, growing all the while.

Chopper worked quickly.

Sanji's curses kept on coming.

Zoro twitched, now and then. But nothing more.

Chopper caught the thing as it was boring into the diaphragm, seizing the writhing, bloated, pus-yellow worm with clamps and extracting it with a steady pull, not letting the urgency battering his self-control take hold. If it broke, the thing's growth factor was enough to let it heal and burrow on.

It came free with a vile sucking noise, glistening with blood and mucus and its own slime, trailing a shred of dripping connective tissue. The worm's insane rate of expansion during this part of its life cycle had seemingly developed by trading away all but the most basic of functions, and that was the only reason it could be pulled out without even worse damage. There were no barbs or scales to embed it and tear flesh upon extraction. Its pulsing mouth end was only a hole containing a pair of flat, slicing teeth that kept mindlessly working even now. The worm twisted and undulated, still seeking the warm flesh that had so recently surrounded it.

The growth rate also required that it consume flesh, every second, until it reached the critical mass for its next life stage.

This one wouldn't. Chopper flung it away, and by the time it struck the ground, it was already limp and dead, its metabolic requirements unmet.

Luffy hissed out a sigh, shuddering. Sanji's curses trailed off into heavy, uneven breaths. Brook exhaled emphatically through his teeth.

Chopper ignored them. Time to close. He threaded his needle in a swift motion and dipped into the cavity for the first of the tears he had to repair.

Then Zoro heaved under him.

Luffy lurched with a grunt, his weight thrown off as Zoro made an effort to sit up, but his hands still gripped at Zoro's shoulders. Sanji shouted and Usopp shrieked, the lantern jerking for the first time. Chopper yanked his bloody hands back, holding them upward and away from further contamination.

Despite himself, Chopper couldn’t not look at Zoro’s face, and he met drug-bewildered eyes that were trying and failing to focus, lines of pain deepening with every second of fighting off the anaesthesia.

"Lie down," Chopper ordered, replacing one hand firmly over the incision to equalize against the internal pressure caused as Zoro tried to rise. It was the wrong voice, a voice Zoro barely knew from him. But he couldn't let out the frantic one.

Zoro’s eyes widened and his mouth pulled into a grimace of agonized, animal confusion that made Chopper’s chest tighten, despite all his efforts. Zoro grunted wetly, choked. Luffy found some kind of leverage and Zoro's back hit the ground again, and Nami was clamping a dripping cloth over his face, apologies coming with it, low and shaky. His eyes rolled back at last.

"Hurry up, Chopper," Luffy said, low and clear, and Chopper did.

Stitches here. Here. There. Irrigate. His precious sterile gauze to pack the wound. No outer stitches yet. Tomorrow, maybe this evening. Tape until then. Rinse hands. Proper bandage.

And done.

Chopper sat up straight, his spine popping in places as the tension of kneeling over Zoro finally loosened. He rolled his shoulders, took a deep breath, and another, and gestured at Nami that she could remove the cloth. "Don't let go of him yet," he warned them. Luffy didn't reply, just kept his position, braced against Zoro's shoulders, staring down at him. Sanji grunted in acknowledgement, and Franky nodded grimly.

This time, the twitches that heralded the drugs wearing off didn’t culminate in a struggle to sit up. At the first sign of motion, Luffy bent his elbows, bringing his face close enough to press his cheek to Zoro's, to talk into his ear. Not for secrecy. Perhaps just for immediacy. "Zoro, you gotta stay still. Chopper just pulled a gross worm outta you. It had really big teeth and there were holes in your insides. Don't get up. Don't get up, just lie down. Don't get up."

Like Sanji with his string of profanity, Luffy kept on talking, and when Zoro's hands suddenly turned to fists under Sanji's grip on his wrists, he didn't try to pull his arms free. Then his knees bent fractionally but he didn't kick at Franky or try to throw Luffy off. Chopper sat and watched, fingers at Zoro’s throat and inside his elbow, tracking Zoro’s pulse along with his return to awareness until he thought it was safe to wave everyone back and peel off his gloves.

Luffy leaned up but didn't let go yet. Sanji slid off, releasing Zoro’s wrists, but stayed with his hip pressed to Zoro’s. Franky did let go, and dropped back to sit cross-legged, but kept his narrowed eyes on the slow movements of returning consciousness.

"My dear doctor," Brook's voice was soft, and Chopper glanced over to take back the anaesthetic bottle. He held it, a little too tightly, while he watched Zoro blink the remainder of the fog of drugs away.

Zoro's brows came down before his eyes opened, the frown now pensive, like he was taking stock of the sensations in him, and tight with discomfort. It looked like the expression that, combined with the faint scent of parasite eggs that Chopper had caught from the remains of the ill-cooked wild beast Zoro had made himself after getting lost, had told Chopper that something was very wrong.

He didn't want to imagine what would have happened if they'd arrived much later.

"Guys," he said quietly. "Zoro’s gotta rest now." He began to sort through the paraphernalia he’d used, putting aside the medical waste, and retrieving what he could resterilize.

"Eh?" Luffy asked, but Nami pulled him up by the arm, firmly but gently leading him a few yards away. Franky took the brief time he needed to cobble together a platform raised off the damp ground, with scaffolding enough to support the tarp. Sanji got up and stalked off without a backward glance, then stood, arms folded more tightly than normal, staring pointedly away and out into the swamp. Usopp trailed after him and stood awkwardly at his back, shooting unhappy glances at Zoro’s bandage-swathed midsection.

Brook rose in a quiet clicking of bony limbs, and he and Robin moved with Chopper to shift Zoro from the ground to Franky's platform. In the time it took them to do that, Franky had laid open a bedroll for them to place him on.

Zoro kept silent, looked at them blearily as they moved him. His gaze was still sluggish, and Chopper could see the slight pinch around his eyes that was Zoro's concession to the pain Chopper knew he was in.

Chopper, for his part, abandoned Heavy Point for his usual shape, and clambered up onto the platform as Brook and Robin withdrew.

"Never doing that again," Zoro said, low and strained, as Chopper sat by his shoulder, and hurriedly wetted the remains of Sanji's shirt with his canteen to wipe away the blood that hadn't flaked off when he'd transformed. It was congealed into the fur of his arms in some spots, but his hooves were clean, since his hands had been gloved. He used the last corner of the shirt fabric to wipe away the bloody fingerprints on Zoro’s throat and arm where Chopper had tracked his pulse.

He unscrewed the cap on his other canteen to put against Zoro's lips.

"No, no, no," Chopper said, when Zoro tried to raise his head. Under the slight pressure of Chopper’s hoof on his forehead, and his own fatigue, Zoro gave in, and Chopper carefully gave him a few drops of water at a time. "I'm sorry," he said softly. "I'm sorry, Zoro. I didn't want to do it. I had to." The explanation he'd babbled, after the understanding had struck him all at once, had been panicky and desperate, and hurried to say the least.

Not that Chopper wanted to _ever_ have to cut into Zoro while he was awake, no matter how stoic Zoro insisted he could be. But in this case, the drugs had been for more than that. Keeping him as unconscious as possible had slowed his pulse and made his blood, laced with anaesthetic compounds, unpalatable to the parasite, kept it away from the abdominal artery.

"I know... I remember what you said."

"You sure fought anyway." The memory made Chopper tremble, cold inside even with the oppressive heat around them. Cutting into someone that deeply while they were only barely under, and then having them wake... repeatedly? Nightmare, one of the worst, become reality. "You metabolized the anaesthetic almost as soon as you breathed it in." Chopper hung his head.

"I know." The words were flat, but at Chopper's flinch, Zoro lifted one arm, and before Chopper could make him put it down, he'd curled it around Chopper's middle, and pulled him snug up against his side. Chopper would've cuddled close, normally, but held back, wary of the great gash down Zoro's belly, and just rested the slightest bit of his weight on Zoro's side. "I know,” Zoro repeated, more mildly. “S'fine now."

Chopper could hardly stand it. After an ordeal like that, one that Chopper's ill-prepared supplies had caused, Zoro was comforting him. And he wanted it, but he couldn't—he'd—it wasn't—"I'm sorry," Chopper gulped, and started to rise. "I gotta go, we gotta set up camp, and I need to help Sanji make you—"

"Sanji knows what to do for me," Zoro interrupted him steadily. "And I think they're doing the other stuff fine on their own."

Chopper sniffled and looked back over his shoulder, and indeed, they were busy already. There was wood being stacked for a fire and a couple of tent platforms already made (and two less trees than just before) and Sanji rummaging for the components of supper—Zoro tightened his grip for a moment again, and Chopper turned back to him, slumping close, resting both hooves lightly on Zoro's chest, close as he'd dare get to a hug. "I'll need a better mixture for you," he said, eyes fixed sideways on the bandages. Blood was spotting through them already, but vastly less than there would've been from almost anyone else.

"You'll find one," Zoro answered, almost a sigh. "You're a good doctor." Chopper dared to look at his face; Zoro's eyes were closed. Now that his body had dealt with the anaesthetic, it seemed to feel safe enough to allow true sleep.

"Asshole," Chopper told him.

Zoro smiled faintly, before his breathing slowed and evened out. Chopper stayed where he was for a long while.


End file.
